Blessed Cursed with a Good Memory

I'm one of those strange cookies that remembers the details of my life with a bit too much detail. Sometimes I even dream and awake with perfect clarity of the details, remembering smells, textures, colors, etcetera. Dreams are sometimes a little too vivid for me and, on occasion, I awake and am not sure where the dream leaves off and reality begins.

But it has been pointed out to me a few times in my life by friends, coworkers, and family, that I have a knack for remembering details, events. One of my supervisors, many many years ago, was rather frustrated when I challenged him with the details of a raise that he had long ago promised my trust coworker, JS, and myself. My recollection was so precise, quoting him nearly verbatim, that he whined, "...you and that damned memory of yours!!" We wound up with a raise, but nothing like that which was promised.

Having a great memory also proved useful in college for remembering human bones, noble & diatomic gases, the cranial nerves of the head, organic & biochemical reactions, handy phrases in Egyptian, Japanese, and Vietnamese that I'll never need to know, yet they are stuck in my head. Permanently. Why on earth do I need to know how to ask for a "key" in Japanese? I have no idea but it's burned into memory. I aced my pre-med courses thanks to a good memory. How else is it done, really?

I remember with uncanny clarity people that have come into my life. Places we visited, things we did. Most of all I remember situations or events. Where each person sat or was standing, what they wore, the exact sound of their voices in particular situations, the words they used, the expressions on their faces be it happy or sad. The smell of their cologne or of a room. I am not so good with sequencing events (or remembering people's names), but if left for a while to sit and brew, I can piece everything together into a chain of events, and sometimes even the names come back to me.

It's wonderful to remember good times with people who are still a part of my life. Happy memories that I can linger over and relive. But there's a dark side to having a good memory.

I remember all too clearly those that have disappeared from my life, and where memories are conflicted with good and not so good, the conversations and situations that preceded our parting are memories that I wish I could bury at times. They're just too vivid, too painful. They singe and burn. I guess I can't have a good memory only for the purpose of recounting the positive events in my life though. But sometimes the memory is just too intense and I wonder if I would be better off without such "total recall".

I've wondered if part of the reason for this memory curse is that I have always kept in touch with people I've met throughout my life. My DH, like many, does not keep connections with anyone from the past, whether schoolmates, old coworkers, old flames, etc. I have never been that way. I've always felt a need to stay connected with people that made marks or impressions in my life. If the person was valuable enough to me, say, 15 years ago that at that point I spent years of quality time with them, time out of my very short life, well then why on earth would I suddenly behave as though they didn't exist? I shared many years of my life with them. To shun them is to ignore that part of my very finite life. Many people grow apart, and that's fine to do so, but we're all together in this common experience called life and it just seems so strange, to me, that people try to erase everything. As if it didn't happen.

So in the last few weeks I contacted a few people that I hadn't talked to or seen in a few years. I just had to. Call it a lupron-induced mania if you will, but I had to do it. I always wonder if these people are truly happy to hear from me, or if they wonder why the heck this person is writing, calling, emailing me out of the blue? Are they possessed by their memory as am I?

Is my memory is the result of my unwillingness to let the past disappear into the ether? Am I purposefully staying in touch with people in an effort to not forget? Or am I helpless, a slave to this memory thing, and as a result of it I have no other option but to stay in touch with people from long ago?

I wish I knew.

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On the infertility front, our U/S is scheduled for Thursday morning. Two days away. Hopefully that nasty cyst has disappeared and we can move forward with stims. All I know is I do NOT want to be told, "Oh just come back in another week. That'll be $500."

200 Posts Came and Went

I just realized today as I was starting my post that this makes my 203rd post. 200 posts came and went. Wasn't I just saying in my last post how time flies by? It continues to do so at an astounding speed.

I guess it is an anniversary of sorts.

I remember back in December 2005 I was sitting around a table of infertile (IF) bloggers yet I was not yet a blogger myself. I barely even realized that I was infertile, my first telltale surgery had just happened in October and I was still recoiling from the shock that my tubes were blocked.

I'd stumbled onto this group of ladies' blogs and was intrigued at their stories. Somehow I wound up with an invitation of sorts to this infertiliblogapalooza event and I showed up. Everyone had met online and this was the first time they were laying eyes on each other. They knew each other intimately from blog world, and what was interesting is that everyone had already shared their stories and it was more of a re-meeting because, as I mentioned, most of these people had never met before. I remember listening intently to everyone's stories, trying to glean some bit of useful information, and of being taken aback by one lady's experience dealing with reproductive immunological issues. She told me eye popping stories of how she and her husband had to travel to Mexico to get this procedure called LIT (leukocyte immune therapy). I nodded my head, listened, and thanked the gods that I'd never have to go through any of this.

I only had blocked tubes, you see. Immunology wasn't something that I needed to really think about.

R.I.G.H.T.

Little did I know at that brunch that my infertility was more far reaching than I could ever imagine. Not only would I, too, become an immunology patient like the lovely red haired lady on my right, I would myself make two trips to Nogales Mexico for LIT, I'd travel to NYC to see Dr. Hungarian, and I'd even go so far as to buy three centrifuges and a lab full of supplies so that I could do my own LIT and never have to fly to Mexico again.

Talk about a reality check.

I was so ignorant. I look back on that silly woman sitting at the brunch table and wonder, "How could I have been so incredibly naive?"

Despite having my head buried firmly in the sand, I left, promising a number of the women that I would make an attempt at blogging.

Well I came through on my threat and here I am 203 posts later.

I hope that I've written something useful. I look at my stats on occasion and it's interesting to see the queries that bring people to my blog. I saw one query today that said "Q Tip in Penis". Okay. That's an odd way to get to me but I understand why they found me. (I recounted J's experience with Dr. Hungarian and the Q-Tip. Better leave it like that).

I haven't been too careful about the quality of my writing in general. I apologize for that if you are reading. I don't mean to be careless about my writing, it's just that it's just so hard to even get the words out at times that I can barely think of style and flow. There are plenty of bloggers who I think must spend hours writing their posts, editing and re-editing. I just can't do that. If I did that I fathom that I wouldn't blog at all.

Thanks for bearing with me this long.

Where Did The Time Go?

Two nights ago I telephoned, CR, a very dear old friend. She is someone who I was very close to up until 7 years ago when I moved to the SillyCon Valley. The distance has made it hard to stay in touch as they are just not "online" people. I had met her husband, KR in 1993. I remember the year because it was the year I got my real estate license. KR was a sheriff's deputy and so was my BF at that time. I remember the day we met. My deputy went to the R's house and the deputy's sat in the garage with their guns and beer. (You're thinking: "Guns and alcohol don't mix!" Honestly, I haven't met a single cop that believes that one). It was a blazingly hot summer day and I was working as a real estate agent. I showed up in my own car. Over beers we all became close friends.

A year or two after befriending this couple, the husband found that his wife had cheated on him and he had pressured her to leave. (Ironic because, after knowing him for a few years I discovered that it was HE who was the one carrying on the clandestine affairs and his whole charade of punishing her, for the same thing he was doing, was pathetic at best). Being a close family friend, and recently parted from my deputy BF, who I had caught cheating on me with the Sheriff department's "blood nurse", I moved into the R household and became an instant Au Pair.

Their three children were young. The oldest a boy, was in 3rd grade or so. The middle girl, just starting kindergarden. And the youngest, little M, my sweet pea, she was barely a toddler when I took over the household. I think it had to be 1994 or 1995 when I moved in with them. I was a post grad student at the local community college right down the street and I was taking courses to get my fanny into medical school. It was a perfect arrangement as my physics & bio courses were in the AM after the two older kids went to school, and my chemistry courses were in the evenings.

At this point in my life, I didn't think that I would ever have children. I'd had no less than three relationships, all long term, that had led no where. The first one isn't worth mentioning. The second, CD, I was engaged to. I actually wanted to have children with him like nobody's business. I even used to secretly plot to poke holes in our condoms so that he'd let me have a child. The third was the Deputy. The only one I'd thought of having children with was CD and CD and I parted in 1989 or 1990, so by the time I stumbled into the R household, the idea of raising children had long left my psyche.

I don't really recall how long it was that I took care of the children. One day CR had come back to visit. She and KR were on the verge of reconciling. Some chaos ensued over the dinner table that evening and little M cried out,

"I WANT NINAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"*

CR realized at that point that her youngest had bonded a bit too closely to me and she moved back home rather quickly after that. I stayed on for a short while but when a young couple across the street mentioned to me that they had a room that they were looking to rent out I moved out. I wasn't really needed anymore by that point except for the occasional night or morning.

But I stayed close to the R family for years to come.

So I've been meaning to telephone CR. I think of her and the kids often and somehow I just never pick up the phone. But I finally did it. I called her two nights ago. She seemed so happy to have heard from me. Said my last card to them was still on the refrigerator. The child have been asking where I'm at, how they can write to me, etc, etc.

And here is where my jaw dropped.

The oldest boy is now at one of the Cal State colleges. I think he's been there for a couple years as the middle girl, BR, is a freshman at a college in Idaho. They were a couple years apart so the oldest, the boy, must be a junior or senior by now. And my little M? My sweet pea? She's a freshman in high school. Her mother says that she has "long blonde hair just like you".

How did my little sweet pea go from saying "Nina*...more powder!!" when I was changing her diapers, to a freshman in high school?

I missed her first crush. Her first date. Her first dance. I miss her so much. She may be the closest thing to a daughter that I'll ever have. I think I just realized that...in the 11th hour.

Where did the time go?

I do know that when this cycle is done, I will be making a trip down there to see my sweet pea and her family the first chance that I get.

---

*M couldn't say my name, Linda, so I became "Nina" to her and the rest of the family.

Holding Pattern

Today we did our baseline U/S with Dr. Pompy.

Lining 5mm. 5mm is "borderline". A bit too thick and he'd like to see it thinner. I'm on day 2 of AF and I should have started on the 18th. Instead AF came on the 21st, taking her own sweet time.

Left ovary: 5 follicles & a small cyst (corpus luteum). There might be more follicles behind the cyst but impossible to tell. It appears to be blood filled so he said it's likely a remnant of ovulation and thinks another week will help it to disappear.

Right ovary: He had a really hard time finding my ovary with was a bit strange. I wonder if it's moved due to adhesions or scar tissue. 7 follicles.

Bloodwork:
Progesterone 2.3
E2 35

Nurse K said that the progesterone should be at ZERO and that because it's not they feel the cyst is a corpus luteum that is just taking a while to disappear. U/S #2 next week. If I'm still bleedin' I'm going to postpone a day or two as those $290 U/S rack up fast.

So 12 follicles in all. Maybe more. I pray that a few more come out of the woodwork and surprise us.

So we continue on with the lupron for another week.

Yippee.

Weighty Issues

I dared to stand on the scale today.

Since late January I've lost about 10 to 11 pounds or so, depending on whose scale you believe. But today I discovered that I am within 1.5 pounds to get back to where I was when I started my last FET last September.

Gone is a large portion of the fat on my ass from my trip to NYC to visit Dr. Hungarian where we enjoyed way too many lovely meals....then Bologna, Italy, where I inhaled everything in sight: pizza, tortelloni in porcini mushroom cream sauce, near-pint-sized servings of gelato, and let's not forget the chocolate....the divine chocolate..... then came Thanksgiving dinner, my birthday dinners (yes plural), and of course all of those boxes of candy from Christmas, pre Christmas dinners, the actual Christmas Eve dinner, etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseaum. It's no wonder why I gained the weight.

I've been doing a 45 minutes to an hour a day on the elliptical trainer, followed by about 15 to 20 minutes of weights. I'm a wimp though. When I am done with cardio I can barely move. I slither off of the elliptical trainer all sweaty and with "bad hair" and am barely able to get my sweatshirt back on. I make my way back downstairs to the weight room, legs trembling, and try to do 15 minutes of weights. That is about all I can do. As for diet/food, I've been laying off of all things white (sugar, flour, rice, potatoes) and eating lots of protein (especially at night). I am thankful that it worked. I pray my eggs have not suffered from the change in my diet and hope that the increased cardio means that more blood has gotten to my ovaries.

Dr. Moustache puts these pages in with his IVF documents that discuss BMI and probability of conceiving. If you're too thin, you don't get preggers. If you're too fat, you don't get preggers. I understand the skinny part of it. Fat produces estrogen and you need estrogen. But if you're heavier, how does that function in infertility? Why is it that BMI screws with an IVF cycle anyways? Anyone? Please pipe in. So my BMI is about 23.4 once again. I am thrilled. No quite in the middle of that safe zone of 20 to 25, or is that 19 to 25? But close enough.

I would love to lose the other 11.5 pounds I've gained in the last six years, but I think I will try to be pleased with the progress I've made. If I could lose the rest of this weight I'd suddenly have access to a huge wardrobe of clothes I've put aside. Stims start Thursday night or Friday morning so I guess I just try to maintain from here on out.

The protocol from the RE is looking like the following:
5 iu Lupron AM & PM
225iu GonalF AM & PM
75iu Menopur AM &/or PM (TBD on Thursday)
10 days of doxycycline before retrieval

The protocol from Dr. S is as follows:
50mcg Synthroid (1X/day)
30mg/.3ml Lovenox AM & PM
30g IVIg on day 2 of Stims and 2 days before transfer
Dexamethazone (1X day) *This is something we're likely to skip out on
Baby Aspirin
Folgard
4g Fish Oil

The protocol from Dr. Hungarian is as follows:
500mg Zithromax 1X/day.

It's hard to keep this all straight in my head.

Dr. Hungarian said "No immune meds!" so he doesn't want me to do Dexamethazone or Humira. Both of which I will be a bit afraid to cycle without. (What is the reason for the steroids anyways? Thalia? Anyone?)

I guess we'll be making a few quick decisions if we have the green light on Thursday.

Lupron Crisis

I am literally freaking out.

I'm pissed for no particular reason, and for every reason in particular. I have warned all parties in the house that I'm jacked up on lupron and things will only get worse. I'm not using this as an excuse to "go off". Really, I'm not. I actually thought that I was impervious, impenetrable, immune to the evil lupron, and I didn't cave in easiliy, but this time all bets are off.

It remains to be seen if my dosaging was increased this time. Dr. Pompy's nurse mentioned to me, "You'll either be doing 2.5iu or 5iu twice a day." Turns out they gave me 5iu twice a day. I'll have to check my old protocol sheets to see if this is an increase or not.

Increase or not. This stuff is hell.

We set out late to see houses today. J had the idea that we should go to the new Panera in Campbell and use our "free coffee and bagel" coupons today. I'm not thrilled about the idea of a carb filled bagel so I get mine to go. Mom can eat it. I get my cup and pour some decaf into it. Absentmindedly, I poured soy into my coffee. Then suddenly realized that I can't have soy right now. I poured out the coffee. I refill. Then I come to the oh so late realization that the coffee was in a styrofoam cup. STYROFOAM! Grrr.... I was on autopilot from my usual trip to the Bux where they have the sense to use paper cups. Don't people know that this stuff leaches out chemicals. I poured out a second cup of coffee and went and sat by J and mom while they ate their carb laden bagels. This was the beginning of a very ugly day.

Off we went in search of a few houses in Redwood City that fit a number of our criteria. There were two in all. The original list was something like 12, 14 or 16 homes, but after I got ahold of the list and culled out the "undesirables" a mere two remained. Driving 20+ miles in either direction to see two homes? Even J wondered about this. "Yes, that's all that is worth seeing on the market right about now." So we continued on.

I misinformed mother and J that our appointment to see "house A" was at 2pm. Our appointment was at 1pm. Luckily we arrived on time. $1.05M and it needed kitchen and bathroom remodels. Jesus christ. It's bad enough that housing is expensive in the Bay Area, but to spend that much moolah and still have to remodel? Screw that.

We left.

J and I got into numerous mini fights over just about everything while we drove looking for the second house. He went to turn right. I said go left. Then he wanted to go left when we needed to go straight. Everything was grating on my nerves.

Second house was just under $1.0M. Old windows, old doors, shitty kitchen and bathroom. I screamed, "ARE THESE PEOPLE ON CRACK OR WHAT??? I sold the house five doors up the road for $880,000 a year and a half ago and it was UPDATED! And had a view!" I can only hope that the next agent coming in after us didn't hear me freaking out.

We left. J thought we should just drive up and down streets looking at homes. Okay. Fine. But let's go somewhere NEW? How about Belmont? San Bruno? San Carlos? There's nothing worth seeing in Redwood City in our price range.

No. We were going to see "the streets of Redwood City." We came across a really sweet house in RWC. I tried to pull it up on the WIFI phone to no avail. J got impatient with me. I crashed my browser. Had to reboot my phone. I started to snap at him for being impatient and it got pretty bad, so bad that he parked the car, got out, and went for a walk while I tried to coax beat the listing price information out of my WIFI phone. After we leave the house and drive down about 10 more streets I find the "really sweet house" on the MLS. $2,395,000. Jesus f*cking hell. Why is it that one needs to spend a fortune to have a nice house in this area? I just don't get it. The housing here all sucks. It's old, dirty, rundown, and it's likely next to an apartment building with cars parked everywhere. I want to scream, yell, move back to SoCal where $800,000 buys you a villa in my old area.

By now my stomach was really pissed off that I didn't eat that stinkin' bagel. I said, "I need food. I don't care if you two aren't hungry, let's just get to Bear Sushi so I can get food. You can eat, watch me eat, or share a bowl of soybeans but I need food." J meandered through a few more streets. We get to Bear Sushi. The sign says "open". We try to park but that, too, leads to a fight over where to park. We get to the door and the lady says, "Oh, we closed!" Yeah, "But your sign...it says 'we open!'" So we left and headed downtown. We finally were able to get food into me at long last. Good thing as a girl hyped up on lupron with hypoglycemia is an ugly ugly situation.

While we're eating I have the sudden realization that my menopur is due to arrive today. I can't pull up the FedEx page of the phone and start thinking about how my menopur might be baking in the sun on the front porch. (It's unseasonably warm this week and I am just loving it). We eat and dash home.

No package.

I login to the FedEx website and see my package isn't due to arrive at all today. It's due to arrive tomorrow.

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck. All that freaking out for nothing.

Okay. I don't need it today, but hopefully it's sitting someplace "cool".

Still sitting with my laptop on my thighs I open my email and an old boyfriend had replied to an email I sent him a week or so ago. He writes that life is great and his wife is having their FOURTH CHILD the first week of May.

FOURTH. As in 4. Four. IV.

Somebody shoot me. Please.

Sunday Breakfast

J and I drove out and visited a fellow IF and her DH today for a leisurely breakfast. We walked down the street to a cozy neighborly restaurant. They warned us that it was a "greasy spoon" but it wasn't very greasy to me. Just one of those very comfortably places where people can eat and linger. Speaking on lingering, I think we hovered over our table for three whole hours. And you know what? The topic of infertility wasn't raised once. We talked about SEP IRAs, real estate investing, taxes, Flash programming, Windows registries and why the hell do we need them anyways, the myriad ways that Macs are so awesome, whether France is going to hell in a flaming handbasket (or not), where one might wish to bank "anonymously" (ahem), and so much more. As usual, time flew by and before we knew it the afternoon was quickly slipping away.

We sometimes meet someone because of our joint paths of IF, something no one wants to have in their lives, but it's a pleasant surprise to find so much more to discuss and enjoy, for a brief moment, we all forget our common plight.

Thanks For Your Replies!

Thank you's are due to all of you who responded with emails about my plea for menopur. One good pal offered up three vials of the elixer for me and I was able to find three boxes (15 vials) on FGS for a really really great price. The gal selling them got preggers on her 4th IVF with menopur and so I am hoping that her meds are "good luck" for me and that we'll get some good news, too. My insurance company paid for 3 GonalF 900iu pens, but after that I only had $256 worth of fertility drug benefits left. Ever. I have never had fertility drug coverage before so I am ever so grateful that a bit of this burden was taken off of my shoulders.

I'm not sure what it is about adding menopur (or repronex) that really does the trick. I may have this wrong, but isn't menopur just FSH with some LH in it? Follistim is also FSH with a hair of LH in it because it's not recombinantly produced, but is it that it just doesn't have as "much" LH as menopur? Maybe Modern Millie will pipe in with her words of wisdom and show me the light on this mysterious (and tres expensive!) substance.

I have also read that one reason that menopur works for some women is that the LH helps to improve egg quality. We haven't had problems with our numbers to this point (knock on wood, spit, toss salt) so hopefully we can still get some good numbers and improve our quality.

Last night was my last BCP and so I'm lingering on lupron til our baseline U/S on the 22nd. ON that day they'll tell me how much menopur I'll be doing each day and we'll hopefully get an antral count done.

I am praying for a good antral count at this point.

Sadness

A girlfriend of mine, MG (who isn't a blogger so I can only use initials to safeguard her privacy), just found out today, that she just lost her baby girl at 13 weeks. Her ultrasound was today and there was no movement and no heartbeat. It sounds like the amniotic fluid was on the low side and the doctor estimated that the baby had likely passed about a week ago.

MG had done CVS in the last few weeks and it had determined that her baby girl was chromosomally perfect. MG is an immune patient of Dr. B's and Dr. S's so she did the usual humira, lovenox, IVIg cocktail when she found out that she was pregnant.

Everything was fine. Fine until she did her CVS. Immediately prior to CVS her NKs were at about 22. Ultrasounds looked great. She had a SCH (subchorionic hemmorage) but it was handled effectively by cutting of her lovenox until it had subsided. Which it did. What is telling, however, is that after her CVS her NKs mysteriously skyrocketed to over 30. My take is on this that her CVS like introduced a uterine infection into the placental area that her body responded to with a full blown immune attack. We won't know for sure what happened until they are able to obtain a tissue sample for biopsy.

That CVS and amniocentesis can cause an infection that, in turn, can lead to miscarriage, scares the hell out of me. It's a strong arguement for doing PGD so that you can avoid having to do CVS or amnio at all. I think the risks for miscarriage due to CVS are something like 1 in 100. Maybe less. I remember when my friend Mary was pregnant last year, her NS showed her odds of a Down's baby were something like 1 in 300. The risk of miscarriage due to CVS was higher. 1 in 100 or thereabouts. They opted to not do an amnio or CVS due to the risk.

I thought they were being reckless. But you know, after hearing, tonight, about MG's loss, I really have to wonder if I will do CVS or amnio now. I'm not sure if we can afford to do PGD with each IVF. I doubt we can. But this really has opened my eyes to something I hadn't given much though to. Til now.

This was MG's second loss. The first came at 5 months and it was because her amnio showed DS. She terminated and she still lives with the torment of that decision. Today's loss was just another needle into her heart. And ours.

MG. I am so sorry for your loss. It's just utterly unfair.

Menopur anyone?

Looking for 20 vials of the elixer.

Lupron Day 4

Today's day 4 of my Lupron injections. I'm doing 5 units, twice a day. No ill effects to speak of except that J is missing his head after saying that I jumped his shit last night. Hmm, I guess I forgot to warm him that Lupron's a hormone that sends one directly into menopause.

Lost four pounds according to the evil scale. I was all excited about my progress til last night when J told me that he now weighed 182. "182? You lost six pounds in a week?" He HAS been sick, and he has a very high metabolism, so yes, maybe he did lose six pounds in a week. But when we came home from the Pebble Beach Pro Am party last night (more on this later), he hopped on a scale and I heard him say, "One hundred eight eight?" Hmm....I know have to wonder if I really did lose anything after all.

I have been busting my ass trying to lose a few pounds before the stims and dexamethazone that will start on the 18th. It's eight days away. Eight days to lose as much as I can, healthily of course. I'm doing an hour on the elliptical trainer a day and then weights. Loads of protein, limited carbs or I just eat carbs in the morning and early afternoon. No eating after 7pm unless it's protein. It seemed to have done the trick, but then I have an evil scale, you know? It's one of those clear glass ones you can get from Tar-zhay. Supposedly very accurate. But I think that if the floor it's sitting on isn't perfectly level down to a nanometer it just doesn't work right.

I hate scales.

But my ass is so big right now that I've gone up almost two pant sizes since September.

I had refused to buy more pants until I'd at least made some headway, but I had to cave in two weeks ago when I ripped a second pair jeans right up the ass. Now, if that isn't a sign from God that it's time to lose weight, I don't know what is.

So I bought three pairs of pants. All were a bit tighter than they should be so I'll be inspired to keep working out. The dressing room attendant may have seen me in front of the mirror in my jeans and wondered why on earth I was buying them. But, hey, so far it seems to be working.

Back to the Pebble Beach Pro Am Golf tournament. J's band played the party for the volunteers last night. There were hundreds of people. At one point an announcer had the band stop and said that Bill Murray had arrived. Bill took the mic for a bit and thanked everyone for their work. At some point I guess Bill noticed that not too many people were dancing, so Bill started telling people to get up to dance. He went down my row and when he got to me he grabbed my forearm and pulled me onto the dancefloor. Me and two other ladies danced with Bill for a couple of songs. J was playing drums and I could see him grinning at me. Later he said that I was like the tallest person on the dancefloor so he was watching me the whole time. He thought that it was really neat that I got to dance with him.

I wanted to ask him to take a picture with me, but I've never been comfortable asking stars for pictures or autographs. I know that they're used to it, but even when I was doing extra work in Hollywood as a child and teenager, and had many opportunities to ask them for autographs, pictures, etc, I just could never do it. I always thought, "They must be so tired of this. I don't want to behave like a groupie."

Case in point: Once I was on the set of "The Omen II" and we were taking a break and having lunch in the studio cafeteria. Alan Alda was there eating in his fatigues, I assume they were filming M*A*S*H. My mom insisted that I ask for his autograph. I resisted. I said no. I didn't want to do it. I pleaded to not have to ask him. She wouldn't stop asking. She nearly pushed me at him. I went up to his table and interrupted his meal. Asked him for an autograh. I felt so bad. Couldn't the poor man eat a meal in peace? This was his time to relax. And here I was a groupie interrupting what was probably his first moment of relaxation that day. His reply? "How about a handshake?" His tone implied he was a bit irritated that I'd interruped his meal. I accepted but I felt like a complete and utter idiot. I was so upset at my mother for forcing me to have done this. This cemented my feelings about asking celebrities for autographs. So now I never ask. I might take a photo from afar, but for the most part I take my memories with me and keep them close.

I now have a neat memory of Bill Murray. :-)

Two Days to LupronOr...Is this a Midlife Crisis?

Picking up the brown evil little vial of lupron tomorrow from Dr. Pompy's office. Our appointment is for noon. I get my bottle and J has to leave a sample of his pollywogs for analysis. He said he's bringing his new Mac Powerbook as it's chock full of porn, the links of which no ART office has ever seen. J knows from experience how dismal the porn can be at an ART office. Dr. Moustache's office had an old VCR that made navigating to "select" scenes a one handed nightmare. But I said to J, "What are you going to do? Balance your nifty new laptop on your lap while you have at it? What if it slips off and crashes to the floor in the heat of the excitement? Won't you be pissed?" He didn't think of that. I wonder if he'll still bring it tomorrow?

I'm feeling restless. I'm feeling pessimistic about this cycle. Honestly, I feel pessimistic about every cycle. My mother said to me just a few minutes ago, "You don't seen to want a baby as much as last cycle?" "WHAT??" I nearly screamed. "What makes you think this cycle is any different from the last cycle?" But maybe she's right. I think I am more pessimistic. Who wouldn't be? God help me. Just today I had a lender come to my house...a lender that wants to buddy up with me for mutual business dealings. I told him I haven't been working much because we're on IVF cycle number 3. He tells me that he knows where I'm coming from and that he and his wife did 7, yes seven, cycles of IVF before quitting and moving on to adoption. My god. SEVEN. I can't even imagine. But my girlfriend LL is preggers right now and it was her 7th IVF. Maybe three is NOT the charm. Maybe seven is the new three? Who the hell knows.

But I am restless. I am planning for what happens when the BFN comes. How can I not? I think of how the BFN will come. J will take the call this time. I can't stand the tension of waiting for that phone call. When it comes I will book my trip to Stuttgart to see AA, my best guy friend. I wonder how long I'll go for. Do I come back and do a last IVF? Do I stay long enough to train over to France? Italy? How long does it take to heal from all of this? What am I coming home to? I have itchy feet. I miss AA. He's alone in Germany. A Huntington Beach native, close to my heart is that area where I used to live. He took a job at "Big Blue" outside of Stutgart. Rented an apartment from a fellow "Big Blue" worker who departed to places far. Rented the apartment full of furniture. It's big, furnished, but lonely. He's a fish out of water. Depressed. Lonely. I feel like that right now. Misery loves company and the price of company is about $500 roundtrip if I book soon enough. I don't plan to go to make him more miserable, but I think in our respective miseries we'll find some cheer, some light in the bleakness of a German winter. I'll drag his silly ass off to Zermatt if I have to, stap a snowboard onto his feet while he complains at how cold it is.

Just realized today that some of my Gonal F has expired. This cycle just got a bit more expensive. Ugh.